Chapter 25
Kael
Guards swarmed the courtyard, armed to the teeth. Cannons thundered onto the parapets, wheels screeching over stone. Archers filled their quivers, bows already drawn. The city was about to shatter.
Now, what did we miss?
We had returned to Stenhalla, where Evie had washed the tar from her skin and clothes while I had fetched my horse.
Then we rode back to the capital, Evie set on a futile mission to tell the king what she had learned.
When I saw the smoke rising above the city, I knew.
Dereck Throne was coming. It was too early for him to move, yet here we were.
Back in the castle, we were summoned to an emergency council by Lionel himself. The audience hall seethed with voices, magisters and chancellors gathered like ravens in stormlight. Shadows clung to our robes as if they knew what was coming.
I was ordered to take the gates, to stand ready should Dereck Thorne’s horde breach the walls. The king’s final card, his hidden blade. As always, I was his weapon, his merciful hand, one he had never used enough.
Dereck Thorne had declared war. He was coming for the castle, his militias ready to crawl from the gutters and march toward the gates, torches and weapons brandished. One night away had been enough for the glass to spill.
“My men raided the Iron Rat last night,” Alaric said, his voice flat as stone.
The tavern lay beneath the gutters, a pit where Thorne’s dogs drank and plotted.
“What began as a cease and desist turned into a slaughter. They struck from the shadows, knives flashing, blood thick on the walls. One cadet drove his blade into their spokesman’s throat before they cut him down.
They took his head and sent it back at dawn, rolled it down the castle steps like an offering. ”
General Alaric von Brecht stood fully armored, two swords at his hips, a shield hooked to his back. He looked ready for battle.
Thalen followed, wearing the leathers of battlemages. His quarterstaff of wood and metal, hooked like a claw, sat solid in his hand.
“You all know we will win this battle, right?” I asked. I was certain that one breath could reduce his army to ash, though Lionel would stop at nothing to avoid that choice.
I looked at him, upright but weary on his throne, the crown heavy and too perfect for a broken man.
He gave me a somber glance. “You will stay at the gates, Kael.”
An order I could not contest, though I tried. “How many bodies must pile at your gate before you give me leave to end this?”
Alaric cast a shocked look my way. The other magisters and chancellors looked down, unable to witness me question their king. Normally, Selena would have spoken, eager to put a leash on the storm, but she was not here.
Evie, on the other hand, stood beside me, fidgeting. She wore fear like a bruise. Memories of Thorne’s militias striking the academy during the plague must still be fresh in her mind.
I wanted to hold her hand, to tell her this would soon be over and she would be safe, but my softness surprised me.
And this was no place for such thoughts.
My mind still drifted to how she had writhed beneath my touch, screamed my name within the walls of Drachenfels so loudly I forgot, for a heartbeat, the groans that haunted it.
How she had seen the lightning, the storm that had remade me, and only kissed me more.
Lionel met my glance and hauled me back into the room. He leaned forward as if to tell me something vital.
“If I send you to burn these rioters to ash,” he said, “the whole city will bear witness to your wrath. To my wrath. It will feed Thorne’s movement instead of crushing it.
Von Brecht’s men are ordered to stand a parry, to protect themselves and the people as best they can.
Let Thorne march into the courtyard, and then he will be dealt with. ”
I saw it now. Lionel wanted Thorne’s rebellion crushed without turning my power into a spectacle. If I unleashed my storm, the city would see divine wrath, not justice, and Thorne’s followers, or what remains of them, would use it as proof that the Crown was tyrannical. Lionel couldn’t afford that.
He would trade a handful of lives and one night of blood for a story that left him clean.
So, he planned to let Thorne’s men breach the gates. Let them appear the aggressors. Then Alaric’s army would strike—decisive, controlled, righteous. The victory would read as human courage, not sorcery.
I despised the math, and I understood it.
The political game I knew so well. I would stand at the gates and hold my breath until they asked me to let the sky fall.
I would do as he commands. But the leash is thin, and ropes snap.
Lionel was fighting two wars. One against Thorne’s army, one for the soul of the city.
He knew he could win the first with my power, but only the second with restraint.
And gods knew how accustomed I was to restraint.
I dipped my head in a short bow. The king gave a curt nod and dismissed us to our posts. Nightfall neared. The city already trembled.
“Your Highness,” Evie’s voice caught me. She bowed to the king. “There is something else I must tell you.”
Not now, Evie, I thought.
“It’s about what happened at Drachenfels Keep.”
Lionel’s eyes widened. Isolde and Elwin cocked their heads. Veyric, Isolde’s chancellor, clenched his jaw and fixed his stare on Evie. The king ordered everyone except us to leave and make ready.
Bramwell scratched his head, puzzled by Evie’s words and the order. Evie gripped his arm and kept her gaze on Lionel.
“Bramwell stays,” she said, flat and firm. She left no room for argument. “I’m done with secrets. I won’t keep any from him.” I could not help the small smile. My little doe, so righteous.
Lionel hesitated, then his face hardened. “Very well. What is it, Magister?” His voice trembled beneath the mask.
Evie looked around and met each of their eyes. She did not look at ease.
She cleared her throat. “The mountain is sick, Your Highness. A blight spreads from Drachenfels and corrupts the land as we speak. I came to learn of the… events that occurred there, and I think they lie at the root of it.”
The room chilled.
“It destroyed the Fae village in a single night,” she went on, “and it will come this way unless we stop it.”
Isolde, who had been silent until now, stepped forward. “Do not speak of Drachenfels, Magister. It is past, and in the past it shall remain.”
“The past you deny will come screaming into the present,” Evie said, raising her voice. “And all of you know what happened there. All of you were part of it. You are responsible to contain this before it comes for you.”
“How did you learn of Drachenfels?” Elwin asked, his gold-flecked eyes narrowing. He did not even flinch at the mention of the Fae village. High elves like him did not seem to grieve for distant wood-folk.
I knew Evie would reveal the breadth of her power, but now was not the hour. Some magi mocked seerlings. I would not let her face that now.
Also, she may not even be a seerling at all, but that was a mystery for another time.
“I told her,” I said before she could come forward. She gave me a grateful look with those beautiful dark brown eyes. “She was investigating a blight at the foot of the mountain. I knew she would find out, eventually.”
Shock carved Isolde’s face. “You have exposed the Court. That is treason. You could be hanged.”
“Try it,” I said quietly. “Bring me to the gallows and watch the city burn under Thorne’s fire or rot under the blight. You cannot hang me without hanging yourselves for what we did.”
“How do we even contain this blight, Magister Corvo?” Elwin asked, all cool contempt while Isolde fumed.
“I do not know,” Evie admitted. “But naming what happened and breaking the silence is a start.”
Oh, Evie. Innocent in spite of the power that ran through her, a power that mingled with mine. I had told her at the keep that the Crown would never own this. Neither would the academy. There is no bargaining with kings and wizards.
I would have to teach her that myself. After we survived the siege. After the city stopped burning. This was not the time for lessons in repentance.
Elwin sneered. “You parade before us, reveal the Court’s deepest secret with your chancellor at your side, and then tell us you have no idea what to do?” His tone was pure condescension. It woke the storm in me. The urge to turn him to ash rippled through my blood.
Bramwell looked lost. He tugged at Evie’s sleeve as if to say, “We should go.” He and she belonged to the Council of Farming. They had no place airing Court sins before the king.
“Enough,” Lionel said, his voice filling the hall. “Take your posts. We will meet again when this is over.”
I saw the buts in Evie’s eyes. She wanted to contest it, to plead to be heard. But she would only make a fool of herself, and this was no time to argue with the king. She would risk everything to set things right, her pure heart the only light in the room. That was why I lo—
What was I about to say?
Bramwell tugged at her arm again. “Let’s leave, Magister,” he said. “We need to go to safety.” He was her superior, but in that moment he looked like a child pleading with his mother to leave.
Everyone filed out. Anger, disappointment, and thin contempt masked their faces. I lingered a breath.
“Where will you stand?” I asked Lionel.
He sighed and leaned back on his marble throne. “Right beside you.”
So he would hold the leash himself.
I was about to leave when his voice stopped me. “Word of Drachenfels must never get out, Kael. You know this.” I did. “I take it you will take the necessary precautions.”
“Understood, Your Highness.” I did not look back.
He meant I watch her. He meant she must be silenced—by force, by magic, or by reason. The first two were off the table. So I would have to talk her into silence.
I had never been more uncertain.
Evie waited outside the audience hall. Bramwell had gone. Her whole body trembled with cold and loneliness. She was angry. “Before you say anything, I know that went poorly. But you must speak to the king. He listens to you.”
“We do not have time for this, Evie. The city is about to blow. Go to the lower halls and stay there until I find you.”
She stared. Her eyes accused me and then fell to resignation. Her lips quivered. She was plainly terrified. “I want to stay with you.”
My heart stuttered. She was beautiful when she was afraid. “You can’t.”
“What will we do about Drachenfels?” Her voice was almost a plea.
I exhaled. “Nothing for now. Let it lie. Go to the dungeon. Now.”
I walked away with a piece of my chest snatched out. Her gaze clung to me like a shroud. At last, her footsteps receded. She moved toward the south tower for safety.
I rounded the corner when someone seized my arm. Surprise made me flinch. I twisted, broke the grip, and pushed them back. Magic coursed through my veins. I sent a pulse through my hand and pinned them to the opposite wall.
It was Isolde.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I barked.
She lifted her chin, still held to the stone by my power. “I wanted to warn you, Kael.” Her voice trembled under the force I kept on her. “I signed my name on those writs too. If the truth comes out, it will not only ruin you. It will destroy the king and the Court.”
She clenched her fist. Her magic rose and collided with mine. I loosened my grip. She swallowed, found her breath, and steadied herself.
Then she met my eyes with knives. “Magister Corvo has become a liability and must be dealt with. I will not let her ruin what we worked so hard for.”
I stepped closer until I towered over her. She was suddenly small, a rat under my boot. “If that is a threat, be sure not to do anything you will regret, or I will do to you exactly what we did to those poor souls at Drachenfels.”
I had shaken her to the bone. She winced, flinching beneath the shadow of my breath.
I walked back slowly, scorn hot in my veins.
“If you or your chancellor touch a single hair on Evangelina’s head, I will hang you at the gallows myself and watch you burn under my storm. Lionel will forgive me. He always does.”
A smile, cruel as a scar, split my face. Her color drained. I left her in the hollow dark of the castle and went to the armory to choose a weapon. If I were to burn an army to ash, I wanted a bit of fun first with blade and blood.